If there’s one thing Newfoundlanders hate more than being ignored, it’s being talked about, at least in a way that doesn’t match their own self-perceptions.
It’s a reversal of the Oscar Wilde adage, but perhaps reflects the same dilemma experienced in many isolated regions of the world: if we can’t all agree who we are as a culture, how can we expect outsiders to?
The history of tourism and culture in this province — an administrative pairing that raises many questions of its own — is one in which gift shop kitsch and high-minded artistry have always been at war.
If you browse through galleries and shops in St. John’s, you’ll see anything from godawful mutants made from lobster shells to inspired abstracts of fish and local landscapes. They may share the same shelf, but not the same sphere.
A local author once called the annual Trinity Pageant as “dress-up for tourists,” which is not as much a putdown as it is a fitting description of its purpose. In a similar vein, Rising Tide’s other flagship production, the annual Revue, offers a chance for the common folk to laugh at the foibles of their governors. It is “theatre” only in that it has grease paint and a stage in common.
The dichotomy is best illustrated by songwriter Alan Doyle’s anecdote from 1997, when Canada Day organizers in Ottawa tried to convince him and his Great Big Sea cohorts to dress up in oilskins and be wheeled out on stage in a dory.
The boys were not amused. It didn’t happen.
Nonetheless, this is how we are largely perceived. Many of us may live in condos or eat in four-star restaurants, but our ancestors were mostly toilers on the land and sea. A large number of us still are. It is a fact of which we appear to be at once proud and ashamed. And the schism always deepens whenever some celebrity or other stumbles across us and reports back to the rest of civilization.
Enter Anthony Bourdain.
Bourdain is a New York sensation who gained famed in the 1990s with an autobiography (“Kitchen Confidential”) that exposed the less glamorous side of the restaurant business — the physical scars from grabbing hot pans, and the deeper scars from erratic hours and hard partying.
He is at once a food snob — “I don’t know what that junk is that squeezes out the end of those things,” he wrote of the garlic press, “but it ain’t garlic” — and an easy-going guy who’s happy scarfing down carbohydrates at a diner. With his highly rated CNN series “Parts Unknown,” he’s made a career of indulging both sides of his personality in the furthest reaches of the globe.
His visit to Newfoundland (but not Labrador) was no different.
For the most part, the cameras followed Bourdain around with two Quebecois chefs he already knew — they had convinced him to check out this edge of the continent — and local restaurateurs Jeremy Charles and Jeremy Bonia, owners of Raymonds. They went fishing for cod, they hunted in vain for moose, they hung out in the shed, and they tried a variety of the standard regional fare — fish and chips, fish and brewis, Jigg’s dinner. They chowed down on delectable paté from Quebec, as well as a few of Charles’ creative concotions. There was some winter footage taken of people ice-fishing, and his entourage even visited St-Pierre to sample hearty French cooking.
Not bad for an hour-long show.
Predictably, the locals were divided.
It seemed to escape a few that this is primarily a chef’s show, not a travelogue. He wasn’t about to showcase every highlight in the provincial tourism guide. Some were annoyed that he got Screeched in, or that he spent a few hours throwing axes at targets —one is a stereotypical right of passage for visitors, the other is definitely not.
The petty suspicion of all things Quebec also reared its head, Why were those “Frenchies” there, stealing the show?
The most prevalent complaints, of course, dealt with nomenclature. The word “Newfie” popped into at least one promotional teaser, prompting the usual shots across the bow. Happily accepted by many expatriates around the world, the nickname still provokes angry outbursts from others eager to doff their colonial past. Bourdain’s pronunciation of Newfoundland — which he couldn’t got right despite being taught by his hosts — elicited more than enough whine to go with his cheese. Ask the two chaps from Kwee-beck what it’s like to hear their province’s name butchered. They’re probably long over it.
Most of this, at least, was a tempest in a teapot. Bourdain’s regular viewers were surely enchanted by the range of possibilities the episode offered. A few even posted travel intentions online.
So, let this be a warning to local restaurant-goers: start booking your tables a little further in advance.